These are unedited transcripts and may contain errors.
Plenary session 25 September 20124:00 p.m.
CHAIR: All right. I hope you got enough coffee. We will start like in a minute after I make an introduction to our panel here.
I want to thank Patrik, definitely, for moderating this panel, Internet Governance Update. We really wanted to get some information about these issues, upcoming issues, the December deadlines. Hopefully that will be a good panel, and I believe it will be interactive, but I will leave is to Patrik to explain the logistics around everything. But we have Mike Blanche from Google, Christine from ISOC, Cathy Handley, you know her quite well already from IRR circles, from ARIN, and we have Gordon, official ?? formal official of European Commission, so thank you.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Thank you very much for the introduction. So, yes, this is the last session before we have the ability to go to the bar to have dinner, to plan for the AMS?IX event this evening. I still hope that you will be enough time in this room to actually manage to suck out of these people everything you need to know and a little bit more about the Internet governance and specifically the [WCIT]?related issues.
So, the layout for this session is that I will let each one of the panelists to give a short introduction of who they are and also explain what direction they think the globe is spinning. After that, I have a couple of questions that I'm going to ask one at a time to try to ensure that we, during this session, will actually move over all the topics that might be interesting for you, but, the idea here is that you should be able to participate. So if it is the case that I have enough people by the microphones in the Jabber room or tweeting, in case I don't have to ask my questions. And hopefully, we might also succeed in making these people sort of disagree with each other and we already see that they ?? they actually were sitting further distance ?? I was going to ask why they were sitting so they were in two teams but now they are actually one team ?? scary.
Any ways, without further ado, let's start by having them introduce each other, or themselves. Mike, let's start with you.
MIKE BLANCHE: Thank you Patrik, I'd like to introduce Christine. I'll introduce myself. I'm Mike Blanche, I work for Google in London. I am not closely involved in Internet governance. My day job is looking after peering for Google. But, peering is a major subject of the discussions that are coming up at the ITU, and so, I have been pulled increasingly into the discussions on this subject and have an interest in it and an interest in the direction that it should go. So, I'm not an expert on any of these subjects, but I hope to be able to provide some input.
CHRISTINE RUNNEGAR: I notice you didn't ask does everyone know who Google is? So, let me try this test and to get everyone being a bit interactive. Who hasn't heard of or doesn't know what the internet society is? Put your hand up. Okay, just for the record, there were a couple of people who fainted putting their hand up, but in fact it seems like everyone does seem to know the internet society. So, I won't take up our valuable time. I'll just explain what the internet society is, I'll just say I am a senior policy adviser on the public policy team, and generally speaking, I work in the areas of privacy, identity and security in forums such as the OECD and APEC and also with Internet technical community, and recently gave up concentrating on intellectual property rights, but that was an area that took up a lot of my time last year. So I hope that in our discussion this afternoon that we not only focus on the hot topics but that we talk about Internet governance forums at large.
CATHY HANDLEY: I'm Cathy Handley. I am ARIN's Executive Director of Government Affairs, Internet governance is my life. Take that any way you want it. And I am a qualified not expert in it. I have been leading the charge for the RIRs at the ITU on WCIT, which we'll talk about later on, and here is Gordon.
GORDON LENNOX: Hi, I am Gordon Lennox. This is not my first RIPE Meeting. I don't know how many I have been to, but I think it's over 20. In my previous life I worked for the European Commission. I dealt with the easy bits of networking like security, trying to get IPv6 and then moving on to further challenges, governance. Before I left the European Commission, I was involved in the WCIT process, we'll talk about more of that. I have to emphasise though, that I have now left the European Commission. I have been out of that circuit for a few months now and things are moving quite quickly, so I'm not representing the commission and I can't give you the last minute stuff on the commission. Thank you.
PATRIK FALSTROM: I have my own microphone, you see...
So, Patrik Falstrom, NetNod ?? I was just going to say that the reason that I am here is mostly because I am Co?Chair of the Cooperation Working Group, so, we are going to have sort of a continuation of this discussion also at the Cooperation Working Group meeting on Thursday. So, with that...
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Hi, yes, we already have a question in the chat room by James Blessing from LN Net WC and he is asking what does the panel think of the recent actions of the French regulator and the long term impact on the Internet.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Let's hold that question there. That was actually faster than expected. Well done...
So, I was thinking of giving Cathy the ability of giving a little bit of background so everyone knows some of these acronyms that we already have been mentioning like WCIT and ITU, just give a little bit of background. Because it seems to be the case that everyone in the room except a former Chair knows what the acronym ISOC stands for, but WCIT might be a little bit more complicated.
CATHY HANDLEY: WCIT is a four?letter word, get that upfront, everybody understands that, it stands for world conference on international telecommunications regulations. Which are also known as the ITRs, which is another four letter word, ITRS. It will be December 3 to 14 in Dubai, and the ITRs were last ?? it's a full?blown treaty and was last addressed in 1988 in Melbourne, Australia, in a plenipotentiary meeting. They are very short today, they are about 19 pages, they have ten articles in them. They are very, very, very high level. They don't give you specifics. There is been a lot of talk about whether or not they are going to specifically say that you do something with, say, the Internet or an ISP. That's not where they are right now. And I emphasise right now we have been working on them for approximately two years, meeting three or four times a year, and we are up to in excess of 300 pages of comments and modifications that are proposed.
They are not going to look like that when we get done because we just don't have the time to do it. But, one thing you should know, when you open a treaty at a meeting, you have to end the meeting with a closing of the treaty. The meeting is two weeks long. If the treaty is not agreed to, the meeting is not over.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Can you explain a little bit what the treaty is and what the implications are in this context with ITUs?
CATHY HANDLEY: The treaty is, and I'm not speaking to anyone like you're a child, but these are things that are really, really important to get. It is, a treaty is between member states; it is not between private sector, civil society or anything else. It is sovereign entities agreeing to it.
When the WCIT comes up in December and the meeting starts, it is only the Member States, whether it be the Netherlands, the US, France, the UK, they are the only ones that will actually be able to participate in and contributing to the WCIT for changes and voicing their opinions. I'll be there, as will ?? hello Paul, Mr. Rendek ?? he'll be there, he is all excited, because we are all staying at his house, he doesn't know it yet, it's going to be a surprise ?? we're all there to be a source of information, if there is any questions that a member state will have, they can come to us and ask the questions, but we can't formally speak on the floor.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Let me ask you a follow?up question. Do we have anyone in the room that know that they will be part of any delegation from a country? Okay, so we have a few, yeah, so I'm raising my hand as well.
CATHY HANDLEY: Excellent. It's always better to have more. Olaf?
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Olaf. Cathy, are you sure that this treaty will be so serious as 20 years ago? Because it was a different world when telecoms belonged, was owned by Government. Now we have a market, and, from my point of view, even if the treaty will be accepted, how can it be implemented? Because now, if previously it was enough to put order inside Government to one Minister to execute, now you should change a lot of laws, and my opinion is that some of the part of this treaty will work regarding the voice, others will require some big changes in legislation that I simply don't believe that it can be work a working document.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Let's raise that as a more general question. Why should we be afraid of WCIT?
GORDON LENNOX: I think WCIT is important, perhaps, from my very personal point of view, less from the point of view of individual companies or even Member States of the ITU. But more for the ITU itself. As Cathy has said if you go back and look at the original from Melbourne regulations, a very small part of the document is actually the regulation itself. Most of the document is about individual countries making qualifying statements afterwards. And a lot of countries make qualifying statements afterwards. We agreed this document as long as we reserve these rights. I suspect that that may happen again. But, the ITU, despite certain wishes, which I have heard expressed over a few beers and Internet circles, is not going to go away. The ITU will still be there next year and the year after and the year after. The ITU is big. I think it's about 800 people, which more than the RIPE NCC. Also it's a lot of money and it has a life of its own and the ITRs will help position what the ITU now does in coming years and that's why it's important. And whether or not and individual country said we sort of agree or we don't, it's the ITU is working. And the ITU is involved in governance of networks. I don't want to drop into arguments of Internet governance or not. It's involved in governance in terms of allocating resources. It's involved in standardisation. I saw it today they are talking about dealing with climate change, they are dealing with all this stuff and the ITRs will be part of that, what is the ITU going to do for the next coming years, so in some way would I suggest that the ITRs are more important for the ITUs than any individual ITU Member State.
The other thing I'd mention and we'll come back to this later that of course, the WCIT process two weeks and a day, two weeks and five days, whatever, is only one of the events coming up in the coming years. Just prior to the WCIT, we have the standardisation assembly. Next year we have the policy forum. The year after that we have the plenipotentiary in Korea. So, that this is not a one?off. But this is a general push and it's in that context. You have got the regulations and whatever is agreed, despite what any individual member state says about it afterwards, will be the reference for what then happens in future discussions. That is why I suggest it's very, very important. Thank you.
CATHY HANDLEY: I want to answer Dmitry's comment. My earlier comments were simply a description of what WCIT is. And that it's not whether or not to be afraid of it. You ought to be more afraid of whether or not you have been able to contact the people in your respective Government to make sure they understand what you do. The WCIT is just the first of many opportunities to work on this.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I want to remind your Government ratified the previous ITRs and what happened?
CATHY HANDLEY: Well, not everyone always agrees with their government. That's all I'm saying.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Olaf Kolkman. I'm going to read something from an interview which is ?? appeared on Bloomberg, it's an interview with [Turai], the chief of the ITUT. And I could ask all kinds of ironic questions but I'm going to just ask you to comment on what I read.
[Turai] told Bloomberg: Internet governance as we know it today is about domain names and addresses. Internet governance, according to [Turai], consists of the Internet the site number of authority, IANA functions, the Internet cooperation for assigned names and numbers, ICANN functions, and the ICANN VeriSign cooperation agreement on the root zone file names and domain names. These were issues that were not talking about at all. We are not pushing that. We do not need to. Discussions on those Internet governance topics are addressed by the Internet Governance Forum in the World Submit on Information Society, [Turai] said. WCIT is not going to duplicate that.
To me, it seems that this is narrowing down Internet governance to a very, very specific subset of governance issues.
CATHY HANDLEY: Very quickly. He has a different view than a lot of other people.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Wait a second. We need to get some order here. I gave you two microphones, there was at least two too many. Anyway, because we do have ?? let's take the question from Brian and then I'll come back to you and the panel.
BRIAN NISBET: Brian Nisbet. One thing that we kind of see at discussions like this and things like this is saying we should be talking to our government, our country, whoever it may be, about these issues. One problem we have had in Ireland is trying to find out who we should be talking to. So I suppose, it's a very simple question: is there a list anywhere of names or people or anything along those lines?
PATRIK FALSTROM: This is actually we in the Cooperation Working Group that asked the RIPE NCC that the ITU do actually have contact persons formally for each one of the member states. Whether that person is actually the one you should talk to is of course something you can ask, but that's at least a start. And RIPE NCC has offered to help you to, if cannot access that information yourself, but that's at least one string that you can pull.
JIM REID: Jim Reid. Just some random guy off the street. Just to amplify that point you just made, the ITU list of designated contacts doesn't necessary reflect the person who is the person inside the Government or the State that speaks on the Internet matters or telephony matters anyway. It's very, very murky.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Absolutely. But you need to find some string somewhere and this is one.
JIM REID: I mean, my advice would probably in the first point of contact should be your local communications regulator and the relevant business department or industry department. That would be your starting point. And then hopefully they can point you to the right person.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Paul Rendek. I wanted to answer Brian's question as well. RIPE NCC was lucky enough to be invited to the CEPT meetings which are the meetings from the ?? it's the Conference of the European Posts and Telecommunications, which is the body that is actually forming Europe's position inside of WCIT. We have been invited to these, Chris and I have have attended them. We know who from each of the countries of of Europe is the representative that we need to be speaking with. So if anybody wants to be put in touch with their country representative, by all means drop a note to Chris and I and we will introduce you to these people. We had the pleasure to spend some time with them.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Can you please very quickly check your notes and see whether Ireland was actually there.
PAUL RENDEK: Ireland was there, and their contribution, I have to say, Ireland's contribution was quite great at the last CEPT meeting, so there is somebody very active there.
PATRIK FALSTROM: So we obviously do have a connection there. Go back to Internet governance because we got a question also in ??
GORDON LENNOX: I think there is quite often a temptation to ask for a complete list of everybody. I think Paul's option is a good one. Contact people in RIPE NCC or contact people like myself and Patrik and find out the person for your country. The person in CEPT has been working on this for some years now. This is not new. If they are not going to Dubai, they will know who is. So don't expect a complete list but do expect an answer to a specific question, who is the person in Ireland, who is the person in Belgium, what have you.
Going back to the thing about [Turai]. This is a war of words. It's fun. No dead people. No guns, no... you know. And so, on the one side we have had [Turai] saying Internet governance is that. On the other side, I have had the US Ambassador in Brussels say that their allies are the three I's: ISOC, IETF and ICANN. Those are their guys. So if the US Government is, in their shorthand, says that it's the ISOC, IETF, ICANN, against the ITU, then the ITU comes back and says cool. We are not touching what these guys do. The game goes on. The game goes on. And ?? but at the same time, as far as I am concerned, what is fundamental is this time next year, there'll be a RIPE Meeting, there will be two RIPE Meetings. ICANN will still be there. ITU will still be there. So we have got to make sure things don't get worse, hopefully they'll get better. It's a question of keeping the pattern going.
MIKE BLANCHE: I am sitting here as a slight outsider to this whole process and policy and when I hear people saying, well, you need to talk to your ministry of communications or your communications regulator or the US Ambassador to get your position across for how the Internet should be developed for potentially the next 25 years, that's indicative of how different the ITU is to the bottom up multi?stakeholder process that we have enjoyed since the last time the ITRs were written in 1988. Now the Internet got an exemption basically in 1988 which allowed things like RIPE to be formed. That allowed the IETF and IGF and so on to form. These forums where any crazy person can come and stand up at the mike or even sit on a panel and express their views. The ITU is very much different to that. Entirely top down.
CHRISTINE RUNNEGAR: I'd like to follow that up and you used the word, expression "crazy person" but I'd like to just emphasise that, when we're talking about the bottom up multi?stakeholder approach, what we're talking about really is not only for an opportunity for everyone to have their say, but also a tool for policy makers to make better policies, because they have the necessary expertise to consider the intended or intended consequences of whatever they decided to do.
Coming back to the points earlier, Olaf's point about what is Internet governance and one of the really interesting things in my mind about Internet governance is that it's not a static defined thing. It's constantly evolving and it's evolving from that bottom up multi?stakeholder approach. You go to the IEGF, the Internet Governance Forum, you see each year there are new and emerging issues.
And going ?? I'm losing track of who said what but was it Paul's point ?? networks Paul was talking about the CEPT, who to contact. The other thing you can do is, as you probably all know, the internet society, particularly my colleague Sally, is very much involved in following WCIT and preparing positions, doing the research. But also our extended ISOC community all over the world with local contacts, so, please do get in touch with us if you would like to know what's going on and who to talk to. And I think I have taken up my time.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Let's continue on this question of Internet governance and governance, that word by itself, because it sounds a little bit like if we have this sort of kind of football game where there is something with two different teams with, where we have sort of ITU and others on one side and we have, like Gordon explained, the IETF and ICANN on the other. So, can I ask, there was a question on Twitter, can I ask each one on the panel expand a little bit on their view on the difference and what Internet governance is, governance, Government, how do these kind of words fit together? Is the problem that we have different views on what each one of these things actually are? Mike, do you want to start on your end up the table.
MIKE BLANCHE: Governance versus Government. Okay. Well my view of Internet governance is forums like this. It's a loose association of interested people who have the best interests of the development of the Internet at heart, in general, and together I think collectively we do. Participation, either in person or remotely. Ongoing dialogue and interaction and policy development and improvement and the ability to move fast, when that's necessary, and to have a strong foundation, where that's necessary as well. And the fact that it takes input from everybody, whether they are a big corporation, a Government, a ?? the police service, a non?profit organisation, individual contributors, it doesn't matter if you have a good idea, it can be heard.
Now, in the kind of the top down Government model, I'm not sure how many individual people with good ideas get their ideas heard.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Christine, you started talking about Internet governance as an evolutionary process, is that how would you explain this as a continuation of maybe what Mike said?
CHRISTINE RUNNEGAR: Yes, as in a continuation, I'd say, yes, it's not a fixed state. So what we think of is the boundaries of Internet governance today may be quite different in the future. And the other interesting thing that we have noticed, and we are starting to notice that the Internet model of policy development is starting to influence other more traditional areas of policy development, and we start to see that where once upon a time things were considered to be standard treaty negotiations between Member States, where we now see these agreements or proposed agreements start to touch on Internet issues, you see a large back?lash against the traditional closed?door negotiations, and I'm sure you all know that one of the examples I am talking about is [Actor], so I think that's a very interesting development.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Cathy?
CATHY HANDLEY: I don't know how many of the people in this room had the glorious opportunity to participate for years worth of WSIS, the World Summit on the Information Society. But one thing that did come out of that after much yelling and screaming and arguing with people was a definition of Internet governance. And I will read it. It says. "It is the development and application by Government, the private sector and civil society in their respective roles of shared principles, norms, rules, decision?making procedures and programmes that shape the evolution and the use of the Internet," which basically is soup to nuts, if it covers the Internet, it covers that, and the interesting piece to respond to Olaf's earlier question is, the ITU participated in that, and participated in coming up with the agreement, and I think it's important from the aspect that it says "In the respective roles." It takes into consideration that governments, private sector, civil society, everyone has a role to play and that role should be honoured. And that's kind of what we're working on at the ITU right now is to make sure that everybody's role is honoured and at least if not honoured, you're listened to.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Randy, you first.
RANDY BUSH: Randy Bush, IIJ. Just a quick rant. Our thinking processes are governed by the words we use. When we use the word "governance," we have already crossed the tracks to the wrong side. The Internet is about cooperation and coordination. Okay? I think WSIS, that statement comes closer, which is why the ITU dumped it. And ?? but we have to be careful not to dump it. The Internet is not about governance. It's about cooperation and coordination.
(Applause)
PATRIK FALSTROM: Shall we meet in the bar, are we done? Any comment from you on the panel?
GORDON LENNOX: Well, I agree with Randy. This is about words. This is why, if you get involved in this process, one should be a bit careful about words. I think some of the people I know easily confuse governance with governments. And somehow, governance is, you know ?? I think, it'd be nice if there was some neutral outsider, and there isn't, who would help us clarify the roles of each of the players. I don't see, I was coming to the point in the coming years where suddenly everything becomes clean and beautiful and neat and tidy. We will see the same players next year. What is important, though, is how we focus constrain, scope what some of those players can do and that's why I think the ITRs are important because they'll be a reference point, one of several, for the ITU. I say the ITU, it brings resources, it also brings countries. There is a lot of countries out there who somehow like the idea, and one of the ?? ITU. And they do that because they have a vote and they don't have a vote in this room. I have some sympathy for that. Even in a small country you don't have the resources to come here but it is nice to be treated seriously and have a vote in certain international meetings. So it's a question of not trying to win this totally. But make sure harm doesn't come out of it.
I think though, some of my concerns, the previous ITRs, which is quite interesting is that we are rewriting history. Everybody seems to agree that, of the ten articles, and remember the first one says 'hello' and the last one says 'good?bye'. Article 9 is basically the escape clause. It says, despite everything else, you can have commercial agreements. People now say, you see, we delivered the Internet. People will rewrite what happens in Dubai, very quickly afterwards to say that it came out the way they foresaw. At the moment, I have no idea of what's going to happen in Dubai. What I do see, I saw it last week in the European Parliament, is emotion, a lot of lack of clarity, people shouting at each other. It's a war of words and Randy's point about words, I totally subscribe to. Thank you.
PATRIK FALSTROM: So is what we are talking about a change of the scope that might impact our respective internal existing decision making processes? So is it the case that governments are the ones that should be most worried about WCIT because that might, as we heard, have actually more direct impact on the legislation that they have?
CATHY HANDLEY: Back to kind of describing what WCIT is. It also ?? it isn't about the Internet in particular. It's about high cost of mobile roaming which I think everyone in this room has probably been subject to at some point. It's about charging and accounting. There used to be a mechanism that was called settlements that were done between mostly developed and developing countries on charging for calls. I don't know if Geoff's here. He'd probably ?? he is a good one to talk to about charging, and accounting, he knows all of that. But it's about a lot of other things, and there has not been, and I really want to emphasise this, there has not been one contribution in that says that a country wants to change the Internet. There hasn't been anything in about that. It's a little more insidious. It talks about we want to perhaps look at VoIP, which has many different definitions. There is at least as many definitions for it as there are people in this room, but understand that it's not ?? it isn't so easy as to walk out and grab something and shake your hand with a contribution that's about the Internet. It's not. It's about kind of making a square peg fit into a bit of a round hole because the ITRs haven't changed in almost 30 years.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Andrew Sullivan. This is an ill?formed question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. It seems to me that this discussion is based around traditional understanding of, you know, telecommunications, because we happened to use wires to build the Internet, and ?? so, we figured, oh, it goes over there with the telecommunications stuff, but as a matter of fact, historically telecommunications developed in a very top down way in the first place. So it's not that surprising that the organisations looked sort of top down and now what we are trying to do is jam in something that didn't develop that way. I wonder if an approach that we might use in order to try and understand on these things and propose an alternative mechanism is to look at other intergovernmental things that worked that didn't start from a centralised point of view. I am thinking about the development of the law of the sea or those kind of things that had extremely profound local interactions initially and it spread its way out that gradually countries had to deal with each other because they ran into each other in the ocean and they had to figure out how to cope with that. It's really much more like the Internet works. It's your network, your rules but you want to interoperate with that guy over there, you have got to cope with it and have an agreement about it. I am wondering if sort of injecting that sort of perspective, I mean, probably the ITU isn't going to take too kindly to that, but I'm wondering if, you know, national governments or something like that might be more interested in that approach.
MIKE BLANCHE: I was reading a paper on the way over here about the law of the sea, because I was bored on the plane, and apparently until after the Second World War, most of the high seas were totally unregulated, and then the UN came along and they had a big succession of treaties and top down governments was imposed about who owned which bits of the sea and who owned the rights of the stuff under the sea and so on. Andrew, you may know more about the law of the sea than the one paper I read. But that one sounded like it turned into a top down thing as well. And I'm trying to think of something else that, between governments that has worked in a kind of a bottom?up fashion.
CHRISTINE RUNNEGAR: Well, the other thing I was going to point out is that, to some degree, the law of the sea still takes into account national boarders, which the Internet doesn't, so we have a problem there.
I guess it comes down to a discussion. I mean, really, do we feel that for the fast pace constantly evolving environment that the Internet is, is really a treaty based approach appropriate? And then, to perhaps broaden your question, you know, what other models should we be looking at as a sort of guide and we could look at a range of different approaches and we can look at the Internet Governance Forum, for example, which is a place to share information, to learn, to listen and participate, but it's not a place to negotiate and it's not a place to make decisions. Then we could also turn and look, for example, at the OECD. It works by consensus; it doesn't make binding decisions, but it does provide leadership in terms of guidance in the policy space and there in the ICCP, for example, which deals with issues that concern the Internet such as security and privacy, there they have developed a model to try and incorporate a multi?stakeholder approach and so they have advisory committees, one from the business community, one from the civil society, trade unions and Internet technical community, and not only do they take the advice that they get from these communities into account, the ?? let me say something very quickly, in an unprecedented move last year the OECD had a high?level meeting on the Internet economy. Normally when they have these high?level meetings, there is a communique which is normally just something that Member States issue, but the OECD took the unprecedented move to invite the advisory committees into the room to negotiate the wording of the communique and to adopt it if they thought that was appropriate. And I'll leave my examples there.
GORDON LENNOX: Just to add a bit to what Cathy was saying. This is not clean, and a number of players don't want it to be clean because that's to their advantage. They do say things like "we don't do Internet governance," but there are suggestions about dealing with spam, routing, security, and a whole host of other things, which is, of course, spam and routing, nothing to do with Internet governance, of course, because that's what ICANN and that ?? you know, it's a messy, messy thing. Let me leave it there.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Let me throw a question to you while we go to the microphone, you have been waiting for a very long time now, and that is it seems to be the case that we're discussing on what words we're going to use and what kind of words we want other parties to use to describe these kind of things as is very much about words. So, what a person asks here is: given the processes about word, how does the panel plan to influence the choice of words used in the eventual treaty. Think about that and then we'll go to the microphone first.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: My name is [Andrel], I'm from [Cert] Estonia. I want to explain the Internet governance from an engineer's standpoint to repair something. You have to understand properly what it is, what needs repairing. A classical story about two runners. One of them finished as the second one. One of the them achieved the place which was next honourable place, which was next to first. And the second one was the second from the last. So everything depends on terms. What has changed in the world. We have technology developing very fast and it means we haven't met such a situation before. When 60 years ago there were only two big actors, US and Soviet Union, then currently paraphrasing the Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy, even my neighbour's dog could be actor. Even the very word "governance" is the right word, so the interests of my neighbour's dog could be considered. Thank you.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Geoff Huston. APNIC. Over in the ITR, the radio folk, in study group 7, in 2005, somebody introduced the concept that the ITR would abolish leap seconds out of UTC 1 and they were going to decide that at the next meeting in December 2005, and they couldn't figure out because Canada and someone else didn't want it removed and the US did, and so on, so they were going to decide it in 2006. But they couldn't agree. So it was 2007. They still haven't agreed but they are really going to decide this December. So let's go over to the ITU, it and the rest of this and ITRs themselves. Now, I have stupidly read TR 64 with all the drafts. And it is an amazing read because you see some country saying, we desperately need A. And other countries submission saying, do anything you want but don't for God's sake do A. And a third group proposal say just leave A out of this document.
You, folk, are professionals attending theatre meetings and you have watched this process in action. You can't vote on a treaty. Is this another leap second? Are we going to come out of December going well we couldn't decide this time but we are really, really going to decide next year or the next year or the next year? Because, from where I sit, I can't see termination in December to reconcile the astonishing diversity in TR 64. Do any of you think that somehow, in December, they are going to pull the rabbit out of this hat?
GORDON LENNOX: Part of the problem for this process is that we did not start with a problem statement. We start with some ITRs which are quite old, and lots of you said we should revise them. And that opened the door to lots and lots of ideas. As you said, let's do A, let's not do A. Part of the ?? as we go into the later in the process, we all drop out of the picture, it comes down to member states of the ITU. If you want to get something through the ITU, you need friends with votes. The US has one vote, Russia has one vote, China has one vote and then they have their friends. So, people taking positions at the moment, but the two weeks, and maybe more, and the working days and the working nights may be quite intense but one of the worrying things at the other end is I'm hearing people who are think it would be good if this session in Dubai was successful. So, if you start from a notion that there is no problem statement but do you really really want success, then you may understand why, as a participant in this community, I'm nervous. I really am nervous.
CATHY HANDLEY: The short answer to your question, Geoff, is no. But, hopefully, one thing there has been agreement on is nobody really wants to do this again. It's been long and arduous. I only missed one meeting and I'm not sorry at all. It's kind of like watching a soap opera; I didn't miss anything.
What we want to see happen is that we come up with a document. It's not going to be perfect. It's going to be flawed. At least to someone that didn't like what was said. But it's a document that we can agree to and not go back through this process, because it's difficult at best. Sometimes we have laughed. Sometimes we have cried. Because it's just insane. I mean we went to a colour coding because we couldn't follow what we were doing in TR 64 so we came up with colours, which was ?? it was horrid. But to take it one step further. This is just the first step. There are a lot more meetings that we actually have to look at the words we use. When a contribution comes in that says a member state shall do something, they are fighting amongst that because what that says ?? that takes away the sovereign rights of a member state to decide what they want to do. So, it's little words like "shall" or, you know, "must," but again, we will do this next year and the year after that and the year after that and I'm sure after that, but, God willing, I won't be ?? maybe I'll be retired by then.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: So, something that I think that's worth keeping in mind with most of these discussions is it's not really the country that participates in the, it's not really the Government either, it's often the regulator of the Government of the country that's participating, and the regulators incentive doesn't always align with the Government's incentives which always don't align with the people's incentives, and so, I mean the Government ?? sorry, the regulator is in a position to regulate and they don't really want to put themselves out of a job and so I think keeping that in mind for much of the wording is really, really helpful.
MIKE BLANCHE: So Warren is absolutely right, that regulators are always looking at markets and thinking are these working properly or do we need to intervene? And up to now, the Internet has been remarkably free of regulation in most cases. And in particular, there are certain proposals around peering and inter?connection and connecting networks together that are being proposed by certain large telecoms operators to go into the ITLs that would take the Internet and the world of IP inter?connection and IP peering in a direction that would mean it would need to be regulated in the same way that voice has had to be regulated for the past 20 years. So, this is something to be definitely aware of and concerned about.
CATHY HANDLEY: Well, Patrik, you wanted disagreement, now you'll get it.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Excellent.
CATHY HANDLEY: I respectfully disagree that it's the regulators. It's not. If it were just the regulators, it would be a very easy fight to fight, because we would know exactly what you just said. It's about regulation. But unfortunately, depending on the country, it can be someone from your foreign office, it can be a regulator, it can be some poor schmuck that was in the office, and nobody wanted to go to Geneva because it was snowing and nasty, so they went. It can be any number of people, and it can trade, it can change. You think you just got through to one individual that was at the meeting, they are in a different department, they are not there after that. So, this is one of the things that makes it extremely difficult. You get your choice of Government folks and some of them are consultants to governments that don't necessarily know.
PATRIK FALSTROM: And let me add to that, that specifically as it is a treaty that is open, there are only certain people in certain positions that are allowed to close the treaty, and that's when you might get a completely different person into the room that is going to close the treaty that somebody else has negotiated on and that might be also complicating things quite a lot.
CHRISTINE RUNNEGAR: Can I just add something, this goes back to a couple of questions you threw at us earlier. I mean, yes, the concern about the ITRs is the potential impact that certain proposals might have on the Internet. So, you asked us, you know, how could we influence the words in the treaty? And you have really emphasised the importance of people with expertise getting in touch with the relevant people in their country and, if possible, participating and giving guidance on the ground. I mean, Patrik, you are an example, you are going to be there. Cathy is going to be there. I am sure ?? and there are other people here. So, to the extent that you are able to, if there is an opportunity, seize it.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Hi, my name is Desiree Miloshevic. I am really concerned with the entry to negotiation process from a point that it will, it has this tendency to really change the architecture of the net and its economic model, but, most importantly, the decision?making process that you have been mentioning earlier, and that is that the WCIT, or the ITU is now making available slots for the so?called civil society to participate in this negotiation treaty, and they have only opened this slot at the last minute next week in Geneva, and we are getting to a treaty negotiation process that will take place in December. So, they will have this appearance of a multi?stakeholder approach model and, which we really do have today in the Internet space.
And I was wondering what the panel thinks about that and also, I am with Geoff, assuming that it's very difficult to come to a conclusion and to have a treaty that basic assumption is that the Internet is run on a national basis which we all know is far from the truth. Thank you.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Any comments?
GORDON LENNOX: I think ?? I was in the European Parliament last week and listened to a friend of ours, someone many of, you know, defend the ITU position and of course the ITU is bottom up. It's multi?stakeholder, etc., etc., because the inputs come from low down, you know, they come from whatever is happening in a country, it moves up. Yes, there is a pyramid. So, and then when certain civil society components start waving their hand and say "join in the party". I think the problem is that this is in the world of big politics. A colleague of mine said that every time he goes to one of these big meetings, Internet telecoms, he looks at the origin of the person in front of him on his business card. If it's the foreign ministry, he knows one approach. If it's the telecoms ministry, it's another approach. And what struck me from the wonderful matrix that ISOC and I went from ?? [ITOX] put together on inputs, was, in some ways, you didn't have to look at the inputs, you look at who was for them and who was against them and there is a wonderful divide between certain countries proposing things and concern countries automatically opposing them and the other way around. This ?? my concerns are almost without end. You know, no problem statement, people looking for success, blah blah blah. But part of it is, a lot of these decisions may actually be taken on purely political grounds, not on technical grounds, not based on input from this community. And, yes, people will say afterwards, "but we did consult you". Whether they listened or not, sorry, I can't guarantee that. I would recommend, though, as I said earlier, you do get involved at your national level. One of the messages has to be talk to other people, nobody ?? no country will come out of this successfully unless they have friends. They have to have other countries with them on their side. And the European Union recently, just a month back, there is a proposal made for a making sure there is a unified European Union position, people have been working for quite some time now to make sure there is a CEPT position, which is more than the European Union; it's almost 40 countries. You need those groups to work together to push things, individual countries, away from certain very big ones, need to work together. But even the big ones, the US has one vote. This is about ?? if you want to influence this, part of the message has to be work with other people who are like?minded. Make the compromise with them, not with people you really don't want to compromise with. You have to come together and work for that consensus, but at the end of the day I do believe, what I heard quite some time back is people want a successful thing. Now, this is not climate change, this is not a new trade agreement, this is networks. But they still want success and they probably are more prepared to compromise on this one than they are on other things. But they don't get it, I am sorry, they don't get it and so they will compromise, but that compromise will then influence a lot of things going forward and that's where my concerns come in.
MIKE BLANCHE: I am just listening to what Gordon is saying and it sounds a lot to me like, do you remember Eurovision before they had the phone voting? And this country would always vote for that one and that country would vote for this country, but they'd never vote for country C because they had a war with them or something like that. And that's a scary way to develop treaties, but anyway...
CATHY HANDLEY: A lot of this sounded like gloom and doom up here. And at least from my standpoint and what I have been doing with ARIN, it's not gloom and doom yet, and it won't be gloom and doom December 15th when the conference is over. But our world is changing completely. We are no longer in a big petri dish at this lab experiment called the Internet. It's been around for a long time. And as good net citizens, then it's up to everyone in this room, whether they are at this meeting, at the ARIN meeting, or wherever, it's up to you to reach out to people. We just finished putting a website ?? or a landing page together on the ARIN website about Internet governance that talks about where to go, how to do things. I was in a meeting last week in El Salvador with a representative from Trinidad, that's a little island, okay, not very big, and they are interested enough in participating that they are sending someone to Dubai for two weeks to work on this stuff, and you can easily reach out to people. You can reach out to your telco, to your businesses, there is lots of way you can do it. You can talk to your local regulators, but the more that do it, the better the chances are of people being hurt. Sorry, I had to practice because that's the ISP same speech coming up at the ARIN meeting, so...
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Hello, my name is Tahar Schaa. Perhaps I am a little bit naive, but what I don't understand from the whole discussion going on from about one year now from my perspective is when the ITU wants to get more over the Internet and wants perhaps to change it and we get another Internet we don't like to have, what does us prevent to do a new leap experience, as you said, and do a new parallel network? What I don't understand is what this discussion about, when the Internet will change in a way many people don't like, there will be another network beside it, so where is the problem? Who cares about the ITU?
PATRIK FALSTROM: Any comment? I think I cannot leave the panel without answering this question.
GORDON LENNOX: We are playing good cop/bad cop. I think I am basically optimistic as long as enough people get on board and do their little bit. And if that happens, life will be cool. What I'm worried about, and that's probably talking worse about is what could happen if we don't get this right. The problem is, what do you want? I suspect if we didn't have the IETRs changed, life would carry on. I would like to think that failure was an option. I'd like to think that we could just say well we didn't agree, we'll stay with the current ITRs and let them just slowly fade away. I don't necessarily see anything bad in that but I do know that people elsewhere think differently, and so I'm trying to say to you guys, hey, bad things could happen if you don't nudge people in the ribs, and so I agree very much with Cathy's statement.
CATHY HANDLEY: Well... I guess I look at it from the view that what we have got, with all of its warts and lumps, still works pretty well for the most part. And if they want a new one, if there is, they, being a country, because you just ?? you have to remember the ITU is just a bunch of Member States. It isn't a thing on its own. I mean, they have got a staff, and all of that, but it's what the Member States decide to do, and if a Member State decides to build a new net, great. I wish them all the best. They got a lot of information from lessons learned, but try not and screw up what we have got today.
CHRISTINE RUNNEGAR: To your point. Well, one thing you need to consider is, I mean, let's suppose we imagine a world where the Internet is heavily regulated and let's imagine that world where Member States have taken it upon themselves to define that very broadly so it covers any sort of packet?based network, then what is your answer? I mean, it really becomes very problematic.
The other thing we need to keep in mind: it is important to keep a close eye on what's happening in the ITU, but, just as important, it's important to see what's happening in other areas where Internet governance is being discussed.
MIKE BLANCHE: You are absolutely right that the Internet is designed to root around outages and disruptions, I don't know if this would count as that, I don't know, say one of the proposals is for nation States to have control over routing between their countries and into their countries and if that resulted in sub optimal routing or routing that didn't work that then country would effectively be cut off from the Internet and that the Internet would become split and balkanised and would no longer function as the Internet. And there could be a next network, you could build a new one that's true but if you think about the value the Internet has brought to the world, I think in general, a lot of good things have come from the Internet and to lose that, I think would be a terrible shame.
PATRIK FALTSTROM: Thank you. Before we end later on before these people on the microphone, I'd like to go back to very specifically the proposal from ETNO because it is something that is coming up over and over again and I would like to have the panel say something about the relationship between the WCIT process where you say governments are actually negotiating but then we hear about this ETNO, so a little bit of explanation on that. But first, Paul?
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Actually, I wanted to make a few points and I'll be as fast as I can. I wanted to very much support the point that Cathy was making. I know that we are concentrating a little bit on WCIT here, but I think we need to look at the larger picture of Internet governance and understand that this is a very, very, very long process. And Internet governance does not just mean how are we getting ourselves to WCIT? Because there are a lot of different games that are going on out there. But what I have to say is for the first time what I witnessed and from what I experienced and from the governments I spoke with at the CEPT meetings because we have been invited there but I also was invited to go along to the ITR meetings that were Arabs were throwing. That was a different process. But what I do have to say is, I was surprised to see that out of Europeans and what some of the European delegations were doing to find out their information and where the technical community had their influence, I was surprised to see the country that I thought held the most open and kind of bottom up way of getting information back from all the different kind of multi?stakeholders was Poland out of the European countries. Thank you.
Secondly, the Arabs, if we want to say that this is ITU process and it's all bad, yes of course we can poke the holes at it, but for the first time ever the actual, and in the Arab world it is done by, and I have to agree with the gentleman here from Google, a lot of regulatory bodies are doing all the work to gather all the information for the Arab position although they are not the ones that deal with it at the end of the day, and Cathy is right there, this switches hats very quickly and, all of a sudden, it becomes a part of the Ministry of Exterior faster than you can think and nothing to do with TRA or with the regulatory body or even the telecommunications ministry.
And what the Arab world is, they had their TRAs reach out to industry network operators, pull them in the room and find out what they thought before they made their position. The Arab position it sealed, done and dusted. The European one is not. CEPT is still meeting again in Turkey and they'll have a quick meeting probably after that, who knows, but the Arab position is finished, it's done. They are not going to have any more of this.
But fact this they actually reached out, what did they include in there from any of their discussions with network operators? Who knows. That I think they formed that position.
The other thing I wanted to say is, again, because this is a long process, I think it is important to understand that you need to get involved and follow this and push this not only from the ITR perspective but just in the Internet governance perspective as a whole. This thing will continue to go on and the technical community needs to carve its niche and its place here, so this is very important.
PATRIK FALSTROM: When you mentioned CEPT, is that in the Cooperation Working Group on Thursday, we will have the Chair of the group in CEPT which will be leading this work will actually be here and present, so all of you that come to the Working Group will have the ability to talk with him. Kurtis.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Kurtis. I am getting a little bit worried. I think that this panel has sort of illustrated what will happen in Dubai in December. You have kept this on a very high level with a lot of abbreviations and nice caveats and raised impossible to distinguish what will mean in operational terms and what the real risks are. I think the challenge we have between now and December is to make the people this this room, unless all of us have read this document so realise what's the worst outcome and what's the best outcome and what does the trade?off in between mean. Everything that's says here will have to be translated sooner or later into some form of national regulation and to the previous comment that we will just build an Internet around this. Maybe we can't. I mean, that's the worst outcome. I mean, Patrik would like to spend a few minutes on probably what's the most significant operations. There are many more of them. What we have to spend a lot of time on to take these proposals, disseminate them and turn them into real operational risks. As an operational forum, we have considered very hard on what this could mean because there are some real risks and we might not never route around this again.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: A little over 100 years ago there was this thing called the International Postal Union and it looked after the way in which citizens of countries sent messages to other citizens of other countries. Along came telephony in 1876, building on telegraphy, and about 120 years ago was pretty acutely obvious that the treaties related to the postal system were incapable of handling the emerging needs of, firstly, telegraphy and then telephony internationally. We needed a new structure. Out of that came an entirely different organisation. The IPU does not handle telephony. The assumption that I keep on hearing from you and everyone else is that, somehow, the Internet and telephony is about approximately the same. The physics of the Internet are fundamentally different. What we did was, took everything the network did and make it not do it. It is precisely the opposite of telephony. And thinking at the same levers, controls and mechanisms that we used in telephony have any relationship with the Internet is twisted and warped thinking. And the pain we're going through now is indicative of the fact you are trying to apply the wrong laws of physics to the wrong body. When will we stop this nonsense and realise that 120?odd years ago the ITU, its predecessor, made sense. It was so different from the postal system. The Internet is built on a different capital regime. Huge amounts of private capital. It's built on a different relationship with the actual information technology as well as the way bits move. It's a different set of arrangements between nation states. The treaty fundamentally is different. How long is it going to take us to recognise that these physics are so different that we can't shoe horn the Internet in the ghosts of telephony crap? Thank you.
PATRIK FALSTROM: So, yes, one of the worst outcomes, to go back to what Kurtis said, is, absolutely, that we cannot do what we are doing today. We cannot even build another network. One of the best outcomes is actually some of the proposals is to ensure that the ITRs are continuing to cover only telephony. That is actually some of the proposals. So, yes, there are people that are thinking in that direction, and maybe it is the case that a lot of people actually, that is actually one of the tactics that maybe can be used. Randy.
RANDY BUSH: I have not been invited to any of these important meetings. And this is a feature, not a bug, I am surprised you allow me here. [Zumi] Okitani, the policy queen of Japan and much of Asia, writes: Has there been a mention by someone that there is a public comment page for WCIT? Okay. And I can post the URL to the RIPE list or something like that because it's a bit long. But it was introduced to the Japanese by the Ministry of Communication and they want ISPs in Japan to make comments, and I think we can transfer that analogue to ISPs in Europe. Or I can give it to the stenographers and they can put it up or something, what do you want?
PATRIK FALSTROM: On the list. So... another ten minutes or so. Let's go back to the reality that Kurtis was asking for. We have the ETNO proposal. Can we be a little bit more, just because the first time, I, as an engineer, heard about these kind of political things, like in 2003 when I was dragged into the Swedish Government, my eyes went like this, backwards, so can we be a little bit more like, what are the actual problems and what should we actually care about?
MIKE BLANCHE: Shall I first of all give a 60?second run?down of what the ETNO proposal is. First of all, ETNO, European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association, it's about 20?odd incumbent operators from across Europe, they put a proposal forward for the ITRs to go into the ITRs. This was leaked onto the very good site, WCITLeaks, not WikiLeaks, WCITLeaks. The proposal, in a nutshell, it talks about two different things. It talks about establishing the possibility of establishing end?to?end quality of service on the Internet. And for those who didn't see Geoff's presentation yesterday, I'd encourage you all to go and read that. And it talks about potentially, in order to fund the building of next generation broadband networks to allow the principle of sending party network pays for traffic. I think Internet traffic is assumed but not stated explicitly in that. Sending party network pays. So basically the party that receives the traffic gets paid by the party that sends the traffic. So that's the proposal in a nutshell. Am I allowed to now talk about why it's not such a good idea?
Okay. This takes the Internet back to the days of voice, and some incumbent operators hark for the days of voice. They understand voice. They understand, you make a call to me, I get paid by your operators pays me for receiving that call. And I carry that call over my network to the user. The Internet, as you all know, works in a completely different model. You buy transit, which is connection to the whole Internet. You might have some peering, which could be free or paid, it's generally free, the flow of traffic is irrelevant, the direction of the flow of traffic is irrelevant to who pays who. People work out independent agreements as to who pays who, depending on who is carrying the traffic where on their network and the value of the traffic to the different parties and, in general, those agreements are done informally. 99.5% of all peering agreements are done without a single contract. In fact, I agreed a peering agreement with some guys from Fortinet here today, I hope they don't mind me saying, we just did it over a coffee. The ETNO proposal would require ?? not require, but put down in the ITRs a framework that accepts that the principle of the network that receives the traffic is entitled to payment to receive that traffic. And this is very attractive to some developing countries as well because there is, in the world of voice, some countries, developing countries made a lot of money because of a lot incoming calls to those countries and they could charge high amounts of money to receive those calls and so they got harder currency in their country. Not all that have went on telephone network development. Some of it might have done. Shall I carry on?
PATRIK FALSTROM: So, let me ask you, some of these players that you are talking about are ETNO members are some of the largest ISPs in the world. How does that match, because it sounds like it's an oxymoron to say these large ISPs that want the Internet also come with this proposal.
MIKE BLANCHE: One of the other challenges of this proposal is it entrenches incumbents on both sides, on both content and access. So, the biggest networks with the biggest amounts of traffic would have the biggest traffic flow. So, the large incumbent operators that receive the largest volumes of traffic would get more money than the smallest operators, they would have more network power and there is this terminating monopoly that means to reach a certain user on a certain network there is only one network you can go through to get to that user, that's the network that that user has as their DSL provider or their broadband provider. So you then need to have regulation in place to stop that provider from putting their rates up and up and up, to charge more and more for people to collect and deliver traffic to that user. And this is where this proposal interfaces with things like network neutrality and something that's in Europe the principle of network neutrality is quite strong, the principle that users can access the content and services of their choice. You buy an Internet connection, you can access anything on the Internet. It doesn't matter which ISP it's behind, which transit provider it's behind, you can access anything on the Internet. But if the ISP you connect to becomes a toll booth, to deliver that traffic to you, then you know longer have freedom of choice.
CHRISTINE RUNNEGAR: Thanks for introducing the proposals. I have a long list of what's wrong with the proposals. But I'll try to be quick and I'd also mention that my colleagues have produce add lovely paper that sets this out. It talks about the proposals and the title says "Comes up short" which gives you an idea.
Very quickly, I'm only going to focus on the sender network, party pays proposal for time. So, let's see. Okay. Problem number 1: What we're trying to do is retro?fitting a sender pay settlement regime is not possible without extensive changes to the infrastructure of the global Internet.
2. It could adversely impact the technical and commercial environment in developing economies that need to grow their networks.
3. It may have a deleterious effect of altering the spirit and good faith cooperation that has existed since the Internet's inception. It could lead to the international and regional fragmentation of the network into low?cost content?rich regions and high?cost content?poor regions.
We also have the problem that it could be implemented in a myriad of different ways across the 193 ITU Member States, which leads to risks of inconsistent, unpredictable and potentially unworkable bases.
It may create financial disincentives for networks to invest in the network equipment required to cache content locally and content providers may be incentivised to filter high cost remote destinations and it can reduce options for negotiation, flexibility, innovation in the Internet inter?connection market, and if just 20 seconds, there is a lovely quote from a very comprehensive study that the OECD did. "The terms and conditions of the Internet inter?connection model are so generally agreed upon that 99.5 percent of Internet connection agreements with concluded without a written contract. That these rules of the game are so ubiquitous and serviceable indicates a degree of public unanimity that an external regulator would be hard?pressed to regulate. The parties to these agreements include not only Internet backbone access and content distribution networks but also universities, NGOs, branches of governments, individuals and enterprises of all sorts, a universality of the constituents of the Internet that extends far beyond the reach of any regulatory bodies influence."
CATHY HANDLEY: What they said.
PATRIK FALTSTROM: So, Gordon, I give you the chance to end this panel by saying some wise words.
GORDON LENNOX: This story for me kicked off, I think it was last year, when Vladimir Putin went to Geneva to talk to the ITU and said, basically: we, in Russia, like the ITU. Two weeks later, Larry Strickling in New York said "hey, guys, the ITU is going to attack the Internet. Start working on this." Since then, things have happened. I think ?? and the ETNO, ETNO has produced its proposal. But it's also been to Moscow, it's also been to the US, lobbying its proposal.
My problem with the ETNO proposal: It's wrong, for reasons a lot of people in this room would understand. They even changed the definition of end?to?end. End?to?end for them means, end?to?end from the inter?connection point, the exchange point, to the end user. They're playing with words, they don't seem to understand how networks that we know and love actually work.
Why put those side by side? Because, on the one side, it's high politics. Vladimir Putin doesn't fly to Geneva just on a whim. On the other hand, we have people in ETNO who should really know better, writing stuff that just doesn't make sense in network terms. And somehow we have to come out of this with something which makes sure that the Internet continues to evolve and progress in the ways we know it ought to.
Thank you.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Thank you very much, Gordon.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I prefer to ?? please, guys, check facts, check sources. What's really happened in Geneva. Because this fact is Putin. I don't want to protect any of the ?? at all. But what he said, "Thank you, [Hamadu], you proposed interesting thing. We maybe a list made and maybe it's a good idea. It's a normal language for democracy. Thank you for your facts. Nothing more. But this fact and this text used widely beginning especially from FCC Commissioners, and a few times I tried to, guys please, read the source, initial source, because, for me, it's just one and one of the myths around the WCIT. Thank you.
GORDON LENNOX: Thank you for that. My source was not the US. My source was the ITU. So, you probably read ??
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: The administration of President of Russia, you can read the original text.
GORDON LENNOX: Thank you.
PATRIK FALSTROM: So, one of the things that we have been talking about which will also come up on Thursday in the Cooperation Working Group has to do with how to participate in these processes, where a couple of organisations have signed the open stand document on what we believe, what we all believe S say, or we as ISOC and other, IETF and, i.e. EE and a few other organisations, we will have a presentation on Thursday by ISOC on the open stand and the participation where that might actually give us an ability to talk a little bit more about participation and that's one of the reasons why I hold that back.
CATHY HANDLEY: Before we close, I'd like to address the topic Randy brought up earlier on the link. The ITU did make public at length that, I think, Randy is going to send in a list, and it's an opportunity for anyone, it's not ?? you don't have to be a member or anything. It is an opportunity for you to comment on what you think about what's being said and what you have heard. There hasn't been a huge response to it, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't respond. If you think something is being done well or being done poorly, we'd encourage you to take advantage of the link and respond.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Thank you very much. And with that, I would like to end this panel. Filiz, back to you.
FILIZ YILMAZ: Thank you. Thanks a lot for the panel and for our panelists as well for taking the time and putting the effort. If you have to follow up on these in more detail, the Cooperation Working Group is taking place on Thursday, I believe, during the morning hours, right? Okay. Perfect. Thanks again. Thanks a lot.
(Applause)
FILIZ YILMAZ: Two announcements, housekeeping announcements. At 6 p.m., there will be two BoFs, one of them is RIPE Atlas?related one, it will be in this room. If you want to stay, you can. The other one is meet the RIPE NCC Board. That will take place in the foyer, which I have been informed that the easiest way to go down is take the stairs downstairs and be there opposite this main room. And this is the new one. Oh, there is a newcomers' welcome reception starting at 7, and this will be in [Heyer] room, Hotel Okura. I believe there will be some signs out there. So good luck.
